


Painted In Grief

by Hawkgay



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Self-Harm, it's only Horrance if you squint, like this can be read as purely platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkgay/pseuds/Hawkgay
Summary: The wind howled outside and rattled the glass in its frame. Needle shaped raindrops fell from the sky and hit the window. Overhead thunder rumbled, and every few minutes blue lightning flashed and lit up the dark grey clouds. Beside the window, Ben laid on his bed and watched the storm. While the lightning reminded him of Five, the rain was something he always connected with Vanya. He missed them both so much. It had been years since Five vanished, and his sister was at a boarding school outside the country for over a year now.His mind lingered on the hurricane raging inside his chest. As the years went on, it had become clearer to Ben that he didn’t see a future for himself. Most of his siblings had plans and dreams for when they grew up and left, but Ben couldn’t see himself as an adult. Outside the Academy, there wasn’t a space for him; not one where he’d be treated like a normal human. His future was a blank space. His present too filled with the screaming in his ears and the guilt in his heart.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Kudos: 11
Collections: Hosted by Elliott's House: The Great Year End Fuck 2020 TUA Fandom Bang!





	Painted In Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt - Needle, Desire

The wind howled outside and rattled the glass in its frame. Needle shaped raindrops fell from the sky and hit the window. Overhead thunder rumbled, and every few minutes blue lightning flashed and lit up the dark grey clouds. Beside the window, Ben laid on his bed and watched the storm. While the lightning reminded him of Five, the rain was something he always connected with Vanya. He missed them both so much. It had been years since Five vanished, and his sister was at a boarding school outside the country for over a year now.

His mind lingered on the hurricane raging inside his chest. As the years went on, it had become clearer to Ben that he didn’t see a future for himself. Most of his siblings had plans and dreams for when they grew up and left, but Ben couldn’t see himself as an adult. Outside the Academy, there wasn’t a space for him; not one where he’d be treated like a normal human. His future was a blank space. His present too filled with the screaming in his ears and the guilt in his heart. 

Unable to deal with the all-consuming pain, Ben shoved his arm in the space between the mattress and the wall. He felt around the bed frame edge until his hand found something metal poking out from under the mattress. Ben grabbed it and pulled up to reveal a wickedly sharp scalpel. The blade was pilfered from the infirmary the last time he helped Klaus break in to steal opiates. The lightning illuminated the scalpel’s keen edge and made it gleam. He rolled his hoodie sleeve up and revealed an arm covered in a litany of scars and cuts. 

Some scars were old and gnarled, the skin a faded pink. Many were newer and still the bright pink of healed flesh. The cuts were in various stages of healing. Mostly dry and scabbed over a few had been picked at during lessons with Reginald. They criss-crossed his skin like branches and showed the lasting impact of what he was. 

Earlier in the day, Klaus had left their shared room and braved the weather to escape. The Academy was too restrictive for him to stay in, even for a single day. Before he’d gone, his brother had made Ben promise not to cut himself. Klaus worried about him and the way Ben seemed even more withdrawn from the world since Vanya left. This promise was not one Ben could keep. The desire to relieve the pressure within had swelled like a storm cloud, and it needed to burst. The isolation and hopelessness of his situation was too much for Ben to ignore. 

Dark red blood flowed down his arm and dripped onto the bed sheets below. The wound began to glow blue as deep, ocean-hued viscous fluid oozed out. It vaguely smelt of the ocean after mixing with the puddle of blood, and it resembled the angry colour of a storm-blackened sea. A tentacle emerged out the fresh cut and began to drink the vile concoction. The pale appendage grew fat like a leech off its meal until the liquid was all gone. It Then slithered back into the wound, and with a small blue flash, it vanished. 

The next cut bifurcated an old uneven scar near the bend of his arm. 

More blood gushed out. 

The ever present roar in his ears of people screaming were silenced and replaced with white noise. 

More ichor leaked onto the bed. 

Ben hated himself. Unloved and unwanted, he had been sold to a man incapable of love and used him as a guinea pig. 

Another blue flash. 

He hated cutting himself.

Another tentacle appeared to feast on the fluids. 

He hated that it helped. 

The tentacle vanished. 

Pain grounded him to the here and now. Stopping him from overthinking a future Ben had no stake in. No longer lost in an endless fog, he felt solid. Less a ghost haunted by self-hatred and numbness, and more of a real person. Bone deep, he was weary from holding himself together and wished it to end. The cuts were the physical manifestation of the guilt he carried from the horror he brought into the world. 

Unable to resist the impulse, Ben kept cutting. Over and over the blade scored his flesh and stained his entire arm and bed in crimson red blood and ocean blue ichor. Various sizes of sickly pale tentacles squabbled with each other over the fluid. Normally Ben barely handled the sight of blood and gore. He vomited each time he ended splattered in some poor soul’s viscera or saw a dead body. His own though, fascinated him. 

Under Ben’s skin, the flesh wasn’t a healthy pink. Instead, the meat was faded blueish purple, reminiscent of the sky before a hurricane. Contrary to his siblings, Ben understood he had never been human. For humans didn’t house monsters under their skin or seeped ichor. He belonged to another dimension inconceivable to ordinary minds. 

The tentacles withdrew back into Ben and left the cuts empty. Blue ichor leaking wounds began to call to him. The Horror sang a siren song to widen the cuts and create even bigger holes, offering a release if only Ben gave himself over - to forget the pain and become a true monster. It was getting harder for him to resist. 

Ben’s grip around the blade tightened as he pressed the scalpel hard against his skin. It slipped down smoothly into the muscle and scored a deep gash across his forearm. Immediately he knew he’d fucked up and instantly dropped the scalpel. Far too deep to close on its own, the cut would need stitches. Going to Mom for help was out the question: Dad would find out. Ben shuddered at the thought of the aftermath if he did. 

Thicker than the others, a tentacle burst out the wound without warning. Covered in slime, it swayed a few centimetres above Ben’s arm. He pressed his free hand over the tentacle and tried to push it back into where it came from. Hopefully, it would be enough to force it to return home. Something sharp bit into his palm and Ben took his hand off the cut. Six perfect circles of flesh were missing from his palm in the arrangement of the tentacle’s suckers. 

The largest tentacle rose up in the air as smaller ones struggled from the other cuts. They climbed the main one and branched off to become a sickly pale tree made of revolting tentacles. The room filled up with the many waving boughs like off-shoots of the Horror that resided in Ben. As taught by his father, Ben focused on retracting them, but the tentacles refused and shook harder. They created an image of a tree blown in strong winds, and it mesmerised Ben. 

Entranced by the movements, he found himself lost completely to their charm. The monster sang louder to Ben, and he no longer wanted to resist. Mind blank he barely noticed as the door swung open. 

The eye of the storm arrived, and it was Klaus, finally home from wherever he’d gone. With his voice gone, Ben had no way to warn him to get out as Klaus walked into the bedroom. 

“Dad hasn’t noticed I le-” the question ended abruptly the moment Klaus took in the scene. His gaze flittered between the tentacle tree, the ichor and blood-covered bed and the discarded scalpel on the floor.   
Interrupted the tentacles pulled back into Ben and broke him out of his daze. The cuts now empty bled sluggishly and dripped onto the bed. Not able to speak, he had no idea how to explain things to Klaus. Ben expected his brother to shout or do something to show his disappointment in him. Anger, he could cope with. Dad yelled and punished him plenty. Enough for Ben to be used to it. 

Instead, Klaus shut the door and moved closer to him. He knelt down next to the stained bed and placed a hand on Ben’s right arm. A questioning, cloud-like touch, asking if Ben could deal with physical contents right now or if it would overload him. Tears began to stream down Ben’s face as he nodded, and Klaus dragged him into a hug. 

“Want me to go get Mom? His brother asked gently, while Ben used his t-shirt to mop up his tears.  
Ben pulled away and shook his head. The cramped room in the basement only furnished with a singular surgical table dissuaded Ben from asking for help. His father frightened him more than the beast living inside him. 

In answer, Klaus scrambled to his side of the bedroom and reached under his bed. He pulled out a beat-up plastic box with a faded green cross symbol emblazoned on the front and shuffled on his knees back to Ben.

He opened the box to reveal an interior plastic tray filled with typical first-aid stuff. Klaus took out the disinfectant, gauze and cotton pads and placed them next to Ben. With the top layer removed, underneath revealed a compartment sectioned off into different segments. One held medical-grade scissors, suture thread and needles. In another were syringes, a tourniquet, a spoon, a lighter and hollow needles. The smallest area only had a baggy filled with a mysterious off-white powder. Ben pretended not to see anything as Klaus removed the suture stuff. 

Klaus soaked a few cotton pads with iodine and gripped firmly onto Ben’s left wrist.  
“This is gonna hurt like a bitch,” he warned as he began to dab at a wound. 

Ben winced, as his brother carefully wiped away the blood and salty ichor off his arm until the cotton was soaked through with it. He dressed the shallower cuts in gauze and medical tape before Klaus turned to the worst of the wounds. 

“At least this cut is clean. Easier to stitch up than if you’d used one of Diego’s knives.” Klaus’s statement wasn’t judgemental or mean. He knew Ben better than most people and was privy to his habit of stealing sharp objects. 

Deftly, Klaus threaded a needle and unravelled a longish length of thread. He cut it off, folded in half and knotted the end. With his attention back to Ben, he held his wrist and lined the needle perpendicular to the cut. Klaus pushed it through the meat of Ben’s arm and pulled. Ben stifled a pained gasp as it came out the other side. It stung. The first stitch done, Klaus tied it off with a surgical knot and repeated the process. The technique wasn’t to a professional’s, but what else could anyone expect from a teenager with very little training? 

“Tomorrow I’m gonna need to steal you some antibiotics cause this shit is not sterile. Otherwise, you should make a full recovery,” Klaus said quietly in between stitches. 

“That’s all you’re gonna say? Not tell me off? Not even a yell?” Ben asked, puzzled by the lack of anger in Klaus. 

“Why, Ben?” Klaus looked up from his task and gave Ben a long stare before adding, “shouting doesn’t help. I hate you hurting yourself, but you hate me taking drugs. I can’t say shit.”

Silent, Klaus’s eyes were dim until lightning flashed and twinkled the spring green of his irises. Left speechless, Ben understood Klaus spoke the truth. Both of them had picked unhealthy ways to cope. Klaus chased stillness via drugs, and Ben sought redemption by inflicting pain on himself. His brother broke the stare and went back to stitching the wound. Enraptured, Ben saw the seriousness on his usually buoyant brother’s face. 

The last stitch tied off, Klaus cut the thread and jammed everything except for the needle and used line back into the box. He shoved the unsterile items and scalpel into a drawer before putting the box on the floor. 

Klaus climbed onto the bed and forced Ben to scoot over. He squeezed in next to him and dragged Ben to rest on his front. Head against his brother’s chest, Ben listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and anchored himself. Bereft of the pain, he smiled as Klaus stroked the nape of his neck. A kiss was pressed to the crown of his head, and Ben enjoyed the affection. Eased of his melancholy Ben knew the storm had finally broken and soothed his fraught soul. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am so happy I can finally share this. I worked super hard on it and I hope people like it.
> 
> Shout out to [Circumstellars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Circumstellars/profile) for being my beta


End file.
